A textile factory in Nantong. The city's copyright protection is subject of a World Intellectual Property Organization report. Xu Ruiping / China daily

Report from global organization lauds Nantong's approach to copyrights

Nantong - The city's self-developed efforts to protect intellectual property in household textiles have resulted in the first-ever World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) report devoted to an industry in a single nation.

The study will likely be released next month, a senior intellectual property official told China Daily yesterday.

Printed in both English and Chinese, the case study of intellectual property practices in Nantong, Jiangsu province provides a blueprint for other developing countries to protect local producers, said Gu Xiang, director of the city's Copyright Management Office.

Nantong's two major local textile markets - Zhihao and Dieshiqiao - selling household fabrics generated nearly 100 billion yuan in sales last year. The city on the Yangtze River Delta is now the world's third-largest household textile production center after New York City and Frankfurt, Germany.

"Continuing improvement in intellectual property protection is the most important reason for today's achievements in the sector," said Zhang Xiaoping, head of the city government's publicity department.

The now-model city was once troubled with rampant textile piracy in the 1990s. It was a common practice for locals to copy designs due to weak intellectual property awareness.

To battle the problem the town government of Chuangang, home to Zhihao market, set up a copyright management office in 1997 in the market itself, the first of its kind in the country.